Student Question
How does the Macbeth-Lady Macbeth relationship challenge gender stereotypes in Shakespeare's work?
Quick answer:
The relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth challenges gender stereotypes by reversing traditional roles. Lady Macbeth defies feminine stereotypes by being aggressive and manipulative, urging Macbeth to murder King Duncan. She questions Macbeth's masculinity to push him into action, contrasting with his initial compassion and hesitation. However, Shakespeare ultimately reinforces stereotypes as Lady Macbeth's guilt leads to her downfall, illustrating her underlying emotional vulnerability despite her earlier ruthlessness.
Lady Macbeth tries to defy gender stereotypes to persuade her husband to murder Duncan. She calls on evil spirits to harden her heart and dry the nurturing milk in her female breasts. She doesn't want any sentimentalism or softness to derail the plan to kill the king and take the throne. She says in act 1, scene 5:
Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty.
In a reversal of the stereotypical sex roles, in which the man is strong and hard-hearted, the woman weak and soft, Macbeth decides he doesn't want to murder a king who has been so good to him—and he tells his wife so. She then pulls out all the stops to manipulate him into doing the act. She says she would go so far as to dash her...
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baby's brains out if she said she would do so. Macbeth is impressed at her ruthless words and hopes she will be the mother of sons.
Lady Macbeth's ploy to get Macbeth to do her bidding is successful. She challenges Macbeth's masculinity to the point that he goes against his better instincts and murders Duncan rather than be diminished in his wife's eyes as less of a "man" than she is.
On the surface, it seems that Lady Macbeth, from her cruel and ruthless words, is the more "masculine" of the two, defying ideas of women as weak, scared, and nurturing.
However, in the end, Shakespeare does uphold gender stereotypes. For all her fearless words, Lady Macbeth says she can't kill Duncan herself because he reminds her, when asleep, of her father:
Had he not resembled
My father as he slept, I had done’t.
She is, in other words, not such a hard-hearted person as she pretends to be!
Later, too, it is Lady Macbeth who cracks from the guilt of having persuaded her husband to kill Duncan. It is she, not Macbeth, who commits suicide.
How do Lady Macbeth and Macbeth challenge stereotypes of masculinity and femininity?
Let me start with discussing conventional stereotypes regarding femininity and masculinity. A traditional view of women would say that a woman should be caring, compassionate, nurturing, emotional, loving, and so on. The woman should also be subservient to her husband. A traditional male stereotype would be that a man is or should be career focused, domineering, aggressive, assertive, stoic, and courageous.
When a reader applies those traits to Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, we do see some similarities that don't challenge the traditional stereotypes. When Macbeth is introduced to readers, we see a man that is brave and commands respect. We even see his career minded focus through his contemplation of being king, and doing what it takes to become king. We believe that he has it in him to kill, but we are thankful that reason and compassion win out with Macbeth. He knows that Duncan is a good man. He tells his wife that he won't murder the king. We see Macbeth choosing patience and compassion which challenges the traditional.
At this moment in the play, we see Lady Macbeth challenge the traditional as well. She becomes aggressive and domineering. She insults her husband in order to convince him to go through with it. Lady Macbeth even gives the great image of beating a child to audiences, and that alone shows her as anything other than the traditional soft female.